Note to tropers: Before you ask anything, please read the Word of GodFAQ to make sure your question hasn't been answered already.

How did Macbeth get such a big head start on the Canmores?

Initially, Macbeth had the same goal as the Canmore siblings: to hunt down and kill Demona. To that end, both Macbeth and the Canmore siblings searched the world for any sign of a gargoyle... so how did Macbeth find out about Castle Wyvern and the remnants of its clan (in "Enter Macbeth") so much sooner than the Canmores did (in "Hunter's Moon")? Word of God is that Macbeth didn't find out through his link with Demona that she was even in Manhattan until some time after the events of "Enter Macbeth," so Macbeth must have found out about the Manhattan Clan some other way... but why did it take Macbeth so little time (only a few months), and the Canmores so much time (nearly two years), to do that?

It's a puzzle, particularly since 'rumors of bat-winged creatures' were flying around New York by the third episode. That's the sort of thing that would catch the Canmores' attention much sooner than if the gargoyles were roosting in, say, Topeka. Best guess: Macbeth has spent money on a network of agents and informants, while the Canmores blew their budget on hovercrafts and hockey masks.

It could have something to do with the Extra-Strength Masquerade; the WMG that Puck was responsible for the Masquerade has quite a bit of merit. As for why Puck would let Macbeth in on the Masquerade and not the Canmores... well, at the time of "Enter Macbeth," Xanatos (and by extension Puck) needed someone who had some experience fighting gargoyles but was also honorable enough not to kill them in cold blood, and Macbeth met that need much better than the Canmores did.

Demona and Macbeth were also allies and close friends for about seventeen years in the 11th century. She may have told him about Castle Wyvern, that her original clan had been cursed. Also when Xanatos bought and transported the castle, he found it worth investigating.

Why is their 1994 ahead of ours?

Okay, this has always bugged me. But they are specifically in the year 1994, and yet their technology is years ahead of our technology in the year 2010 to whenever. Has there ever been an explanation about this?

Well... Xanatos...

...planned for the future to arrive faster so he could make even better plans against the Gargoyles. Of course, it worked.

Or just the fact that the presence of a big company led by a genius (Xanatos Enterprises and before it, Cyberbiotics) and devoted to in large part inventing and selling cutting edge technology managed to push things past what we had in real life. After all, Xanatos does market most of the stuff he or his company makes, apart from really juicy stuff like the Powered Armor that he keeps for himself.

Consider that one of the Hunters was using a spear and net equipped glider in 1495, centuries before the first fighter plane was invented. I guess the world of Gargoyles has always been a little bit ahead of ours in some areas.

Also, Xanatos and his people are completely amoral and won't let little things like ethics stop their experiments. I remember one fan at a con imagining Sevarius reading the newspaper: "Oh, look, they've cloned another sheep..."

Genre convention. Fictional worlds like this always have technology decades ahead of the real world. The 90's DCU had teleporters, the original TMNT 'toon had mad scientists up the wazoo, and Jules Verne had time machines.

Their 994 was also ahead of ours, given the presence of stone fortresses like Castle Wyvern (which in real life couldn't have been built prior to the Norman conquest in 1066).

Maybe the presence of magic forced humans to find ways to combat it, driving technological innovations well before their times.

It's worth noting that guys like Merlin are considered actual historical figures in-universe, and not mere legend. If the court wizard is an actual wizard, that's going to advance things a bit.

It could just as easily and perhaps more plausibly slow advancement. There isn't a whole lot of need for guns when you have guys who can shoot lightning bolts out of their hands running around. And those guys would probably make an effort to keep people from getting their hands on weapons capable of battling them on remotely equal terms.

The Gargoyles universe does have guys who can shoot lightning out of their hands, but those guys tend to be A) rare, and B) not as powerful as you'd expect. The Arcmage is dangerous, but most of that is due to the Grimorium Arcanorum- and even then, he can't fight off three gargoyles. Then you have guys like the Magus and Brother Valmont, who seek out patrons to protect them- and both of those mages were defeated by non-magic users- Hakon and Brooklyn, respectively. Magic may be impressive, but it's not as reliable as a well-equipped army and a well-built castle.

Does Elisa sleep?

Elisa sleeps during the day as the gargoyles do. She's a night shift detective (as are most of the people she works with like her partner, the other various cops, and her superior). She visits the gargoyles during breaks and between shifts. Remember the clock tower is right above the police station so it's not hard for her to check in on them. The episode "High Noon" makes it clear that she sleeps mornings and afternoons.

Keep in mind that she's also a detective and not a beat cop. Depending on her assignments and caseload there could be a couple of weeks where she's busy all the time and doesn't get to see the Manhattan Clan and others where she has practically nothing to do.

But then does anyone else sleep ?. 99% of the action in this show takes place during the night. That means 90% of the cast has apparently decided to follow the Gargoyles-style and sleep during the day. From Xanatos to the Yuppie Couple, everybody is apparently goddamn insomniac.

Remember, they all live in New York City, commonly known as The City That Never Sleeps. While some cities mostly shut down at night, New York is open twenty-four-seven, with many people out at all hours between sundown and sunrise. Comedian David Brenner gives a good case-in-point: "In Los Angeles, if you get hungry at 2 O'Clock in the morning, your choices are what? Go to the ocean, stick your head in and suck a fish. In New York, it's not what can we eat, it's what do you want to eat? Polynesian, Italian, whatever."

We usually see yuppie couple at the beginning of the night or with a throw away line about what they were up to. Xanatos is a harder one to understand. He's Ceo of a company and supposedly would need to handle some of the day to day operations of said company. The only think I can think is maybe he has some chemicals in his suit that make him stay awake all the time. :P As for some of the other characters that pop to mind: Macbeth is stated to follow the gargoyle lifestyle, as are the hunters, Owen probably does not sleep, and that's about it :P

Xanatos simply plans to stay awake, and it happens. :p Seriously, though, maybe he's using a modified sleep program of some sort. There's all kinds of them out there that claim to leave you feeling rested and alert for more hours per day. He may be only sleeping 4-6 hours per night, supplementing this with diet and naps throughout the day.

I am pretty sure there are plenty of days between episodes and therefore adventures; people like Xanatos and Macbeth have plenty of time to catch up on their sleep in between with, say, a 12-16 hour snooze and simply pull all nighters when they need to, sometimes for a couple of days in a row.

This troper has actually heard that some CEO of big companies end up doing just this.

This Troper sleeps from about 2PM to 8PM, not everyone has "normal" schedules. Xanatos might just take 2 hour naps through out the day. I can see it now; it's 10 AM and Owen wakes him up from a 2 hour nap for 6 hours of Gambiting. Then another hour nap, etc.

He's Xanatos so yes. Or it could be 2 stages of sleep. For a couple weeks this Troper got his 8 hours in 2 4 hour blocks. Once your body adapts to a schedule then you function normally until you hit that magic hour your supposed to go to sleep at, THEN you suddenly get sleepy.

So long as you get a minimum of six is what I've heard, however it can't be REM as that is still too 'active', and you lose a bit of the affect if woken suddenly. Many 'in the field' agents and soldiers and the like are trained to make do on as little as 3 or 4 in case of a sudden assault or other emergency. Ditto also emergency/disaster relief crews.

There is a throwaway joke in one episode about how Xanatos never seems to sleep, Good thing Owen doesn't actually need to sleep because he's magic.

Actually, Greg Weisman has said that when a Child of Oberon takes on a form, they have all the limitations of that form. So Owen does need to sleep.

People's sleep schedules vary wildly, both in when they sleep and how much. Some people do just fine averaging 4 hours a day. The human characters probably just either naturally don't sleep at night (or much at all) or adopted such habits for their own reasons (work, dealing with gargoyles, plotting, whatever).

Xanatos probably does what Bruce Wayne does... use various techniques to minimize the amount of sleep he needs, make his schedule so that he doesn't have to spend more time doing "less important" CEO busywork than he really needs to, and managing his time so that he uses all of it effectively. He probably meditates and uses mental techniques (and the occasional toxin purging supplement) to get by on two hours of sleep a night, if that.

Worth noticing that not everyone sleeps during the night and is awake during the day. There are things like the Circadian rhythm sleep disorder and the Delayed sleep phase disorder that make some people have exactly the inverted sleep cycle that most people, a.i., they get sleepy during daytime and they can't sleep during nighttime. Is more common that it sounds and most people with it just adapt and have night jobs or became freelance profesionals having their own schedule. As far as we know Xanatos and/or Maza could be one of those.

Why is it that sometimes artifacts that the gargoyles are holding when they go to sleep turn to stone as well, and sometimes they don't? Hudson's sword, for example, seems to switch between stone and metal when he sleeps.

The Roman spell that was cast on the entire Gargoyle species from the reign of Caesar Augustus to preserve their clothing from being destroyed when they awaken out of their stone state dictates that anything that a Gargoyle considers a prized personal possession, clothing or a personal weapon that remains on their person at all times, is technically considered part of their bodies in the terms of the spell. That is why Hudson's sword turns to stone, but a object he does not handle all the time, like a container he never handled before but was happen to be holding at sunrise, stays normal.

So why does the knife occasionally stay metallic? Is there an in-story reason or is it just sloppy animation?

Pretty sure that's sloppy animation. The show has good artwork and fluidity, but doesn't seem to care too much for details; notice reused generic gargoyle models and Owen pressing the same button several times in a row when supposedly operating a computer.

Either that, or Hudson has a love/hate relationship with the sword.

It's an animation error but an in-universe has been given. Hudson only acquired his sword in one of the pilot episodes. Since he hasn't had it long, how much he considers it his varies from day to day.

It was established that gargoyles gain energy from sunlight while sleeping — so why is it that they never seem to suffer ill effects as a result of sleeping under cover?

First, that theory of Anton Sevarius' is only a theory based on the indirect study he has done on the species. No one has ever conducted any experiment to test it out to see if it holds water, so Sevarius could be wrong all along.

Word of God seems to have accepted that they absorb sunlight when they turn to stone. The best answer I can think of is that it doesn't need to be direct sunlight. Indirect sunlight in the shade will do as well. Also, take into account that the Manhattan Clan had 1,000 years worth of absorbed sunlight built in their system.

So how does that work with Demona? Since she changes species at sunrise and sunset, she no longer turns to stone during the day, and thus no longer gets a solar recharge. That means she'd have to get all her energy through basic caloric intake, which according to Sevarius would require her to be eating several times her body mass in protein every day, like an enormous winged shrew. Why isn't she shown to be either slowly starving to death (Which, since she can't actually starve to death, would be really unpleasant) or eating constantly?

Because Sevarius based his calculations on the assumption that gargoyles are true fliers, which they aren't. Because the assumption is false, every single piece of work he's done that depends on it is also flawed. "Ms. Destine" no doubt has a large appetite, but not nearly so large as Dr. Sevarius believes. And remember, gargoyles can and do eat.

Well, he never did outright state weather or not Gargoyles flies, and Xanatos had a reliable source on that info with Demona.

Word of God also says that Demona sustains her energy through "magic" now that she no longer absorbs sunlight by day. It could be her own magic or part of Puck's or the Weird Sisters' curses (and keep in mind, the Weird Sisters' curse makes it impossible for her to die of starvation or exhaustion).

Wordof God states that missing a day of stone sleep is like missing a meal. You have a bit less energy, but it isn't to noticable.

Food may simply be able to replace sunlight, especially temporarily. Notably, when Demona was on the run after the fall of Castle Wyvern virtually every scene was spent hunting or stealing food and she was going stone in a cave to avoid notice, and subsisting on bread and bits of fruit. And in a bit of potential Fridge Brilliance, modern day foods have crazy amounts of starch, fat, and sugar compared to what medieval gargoyles might have eaten. They may be able to easily subsist on modern junk food.

Gargoyles do eat, as show in the cartoon. Greg himself said that they receive nourishment from both the sunlight and by ingesting food, so I guess the hours of sunlight they get while turned inot ston accounts for one meal, and there are plenty of people who go around by eating just twice a day.

In "Temptation," Goliath is placed under a spell that forces him to obey the commands of anybody holding the pages containing said spell.

It quickly becomes clear that when given contradictory commands, Goliath drops the old command in favour of the new one (such as "grab her", and "let's go home".) The spell is "broken" with a command "I command you to act for the rest of your life exactly as if you were not under a spell" — but the characters show no concern that somebody may later get ahold of the spell and give new commands. What happened to it? Did they destroy it? Hide it? What?

Most likely, yes, they destroyed it.

Also, this was as far as I remember the only command that stated how long he should do it. Maybe, if Demona said something like "Hunt Brooklyn until he's dead", a contradictory command would do nothing.

Shouldn't Elisa's method of breaking the spell have made Goliath immune to all magic spells? As we see in later episodes ("Grief" and "Eye of the Storm" come to mind.) This is not so.

Spell one compels Big G to act normal. Spell two compels him to act differently. Maybe one out-compels the other?

My guess: Spell one is compelling Big G to act as he normally would, so he's acting like he normally would if bespelled by spell two.

No doubt some spells are more powerful than others, and apparently Third-Race magic is more powerful than human magic. The Grimorum was an artifact of human magic, so presumably all of the spells in it were human magic as well; but IIRC the spells placed on Goliath in "Grief" and "Eye of the Storm" were Third-Race magic and could have trumped the Grimorum's magic.

There's no implication that having one spell on you provides protection from any other spell. Quite the opposite: Demona has one (later two) permanent spells from different sources on her, and still manages to suffer a number of temporary enchantments on top of that.

The spell from "Temptation" controls how he acts. It can't make him physically immune to magic.

Why do Goliath's clan show concern for Demona's safety whenever they work together, to the point of risking their own lives to back her up, when they know perfectly well that Demona cannot die unless killed by Macbeth

?

To quote the Aladdin sequel, you'd be surprised what you can live through. The immortality spell might not necessarily mean they're Made of Iron and heal instantly when injured. So if she wasn't killed, she'd be maimed or burned or skewered or who knows, maybe even lose a limb. To protect "is the Gargoyle way."

They don't know that. Also Word of God says Demona and Macbeth are not given immortality according to the spell. They are given eternal youth as long as they both live, but if one dies they both die. That they will not die until one kills the other is not part of the spell, but a prophecy.

Actually, it might be part of the spell or a prophecy.

Eliza kills Demona at one point to save her and Macbeth from each other. She heals up fine. There are a few instances where one dies and comes back because they weren't killed by the other.

Word of God also says the Weird Sisters were forced to reveal the bond between Demona and Macbeth offscreen after their defeat in Avalon. However, given that Canmore actually briefly kills Macbeth in City of Stone, only for him to return to life along with Demona, i'd say it's pretty impossible for anyone to kill Demona and Macbeth but themselves.

But the weird sisters were manipulating things according to the archmages plans all along. In that case the weird sisters actually healed them. They might have even been responsible for making sure they didn't die until the archmage screwed himself.

In Ask Greg, Greg often says that the Gargoyles don't have blind faith that the no-dying-until-they-kill-each-other clause is 100% foolproof.

Which makes sense, because while they know about the spell, I do not think the Sisters ever sat down and explained the mechanics of it to the Clan. And if they had, would YOU trust those three?

^ What the above says. The show never escalates far enough (or rather it can't) into full-on gorn territory to figure out what Demona can survive. Considering beheading was a common end for a defeated foe in the old days, and she most certainly had to be surprised at least a few times (referenced by one of the hunters mentioning she's been defeated a few times yet still manages to come back) it is likely so long as the head's close by this is survivable to some extent. Piecing herself back together after some loony chav is wearing batwing-skinned shoes and has ingested part of her, might be a bit harder to get past. So there's probably an upper limit to it and the gargoyles feared getting smushed by a roller coaster might've put her over the top.

It may simply be ingrained instinct as gargoyles are said to possess strong protective attitudes, as Hudson states that it is like "breathing the air" for them. Traitor and murderous bitch she is, Demona was a member of their clan, Goliath's mate and Angela's mother so even if they hate her their first reaction is to help when she's in trouble.

If Maggie doesn't like fighting, then why did she hit Brooklyn in "Metamorphosis"?

I always figured it was the reflex of a frightened and possibly traumatized person who had been through a lot recently.

Even those who don't like fighting will, if kidnapped, attack their kidnappers; and as far as Maggie was concerned, that's what Brooklyn was.

In "Vows," Demona uses the Phoenix Gate to take her younger self to right after the Wyvern Massacre to try to convince her younger self to... use the Phoenix Gate to prevent the Wyvern Massacre.

Why not just do that herself? Sure, it wouldn't have worked, but it doesn't even occur to her to just use the Phoenix Gate to try to stop the Massacre directly herself when she doesn't learn "history is immutable" until the end of the episode.

You're assuming that was her intent. She might have been trying to get Teen-Demona to leave the Wyvern clan altogether, to become some kind of Dark Messiah to the rest of the gargoyles in Scotland/England/Earth/wherever. All it looked like Present-Demona was trying to do was get Teen-Demona to hate humans the way she does.

She always knew history is immutable since the beginning of the episode, she's known it for hundreds of years. She said she remembered Goliath's words about remembering vows, and she mentioned that she knew firsthand the flames would attract another, which was of course, future Goliath. So she surely remembered talking to herself, and thusly knew that the clan would die no matter what, and that she'd end up sharing the Phoenix Gate. So why do it at all? It worked, not instantly, but it settled in during twenty years, as during that time past Demona devised a plan that would get rid of the humans on the castle which is exactly what her future self told her. Her clan still died, but future Demona probably doesn't care about them anymore.

But she tells Goliath, "You may have prevented me from altering the past, but you failed, too! ... Obviously, history is immutable." To me, this said she planned to somehow change the past when she planned to go back in time.

I think the speech Demona gave to her younger self must have played a part in making her who she was in the future. Present-Demona obviously remembered hearing that speech, so perhaps she wanted to insure that events stayed the same by giving it. Or, she just knew history was immutable, and figured she didn't have any choice but to eventually give the speech anyway.

Or Present-Demona /did not/ remember the speech until after she went back and gave it.

You know what is way worse? The Archmage. He got out of that pit and gathered all sorts of arcane items, including the Gate, only because...he used those items to go back in time, saved himself, got himself the items, and then taught himself what to do. NO FIRST CAUSE.

In the Gargoyles universe all time is simultaneous and immutable. There doesn't need to be a first cause because the entire loop all exists together as a single event. it's like the old paradox of going back in time to meet Martin Luther king only to be dismayed because he's having trouble writing his "I have a dream" speech. So you write it from memory for him. So you got the speech from TV/school/books. but the TV/school/Books got the speech from him, but he got it from you.The speech didn't really come from anywhere. Gargoyles is 100% consistent on this too. When you get used to the way time travel works in the series this kind of thing makes a weird sort of sense. (Note: Watchmen and The Time Traveler's Wife and The Terminator [but not necessarily its sequels] among others use this same model for time Travel.)

Both of these instances make Journeymen the world over cry. Not the apprenticeship-thing, I mean the time-traveling Dr. Who in diving bell suit guys. If both occurrences had been with other people, it would work...Perhaps even swapping the two of them, though that would drastically change the plotline of Vows, it would be far less thinky-hurty. As it stands, how would time be immutable if you could easily avert it with one or two actions? More accurately, there would either be a dimensional split between the two timelines, or memories upon return would change slightly. (The gate being a Fae artifact, there are probably limitations set in stone by magic. You are not allowed to change history THAT much...but you could potentially move the tracks a little.) Without theoretical magical interference, it should be quite simple to tell the Captain that Hakon has no intention of keeping his promise, and so as soon as the vikings chased off the Magus, they would be trapped inside as the gate closed, the Captain could blockade the doors to the castle walls, and then he could wait for the Gargoyles to emerge. Something must happen that either stops the newly enlightened Demona from telling the captain anything, or it barred her from seeing him or the other Gargoyles until the attack.

Because when the moment comes when the time traveler could hypothetically take those 'one or two actions', circumstances will conspire to make sure there's some reason they don't. Every. Single. Time. That's what Stable Time Loops are all about.

Many of those involved in stable time loops discussed here are also more emotional characters. They come to where they need to be because of a lack of emotional control, especially Demona. What's really interesting is the way Xanatos plays it. It's almost like he was Leaning on the Fourth Wall the entire time, with the way he expected his plan to work. Complete chicken&egg question. And the smugness in the explanation seems over the top, even for him. Definite bit of a winknudge in this troper's opinion!

Also note: the Gate isn't a Fae artifact. Well, that's not clear anymore. Originally, Word of God said the Gate was eternal, but when the comic where Brookly begins timedancing was actually published, it was shown breaking open and releasing a Phoenix. But we can assume the Phoenix is eternal.

Well, he has revealed himself to Talon that he's evil so that not only he will save Sevarius, but also Goliath. For the latter, Xanatos has let him live so that they can keep on fighting with each other and that's what arch enemies are for.

"The Cage" happened after "Eye of the Beholder" (in which Goliath saved the life of Xanatos' fiancee) and "City of Stone" (in which the Manhattan Clan helped Xanatos break Demona's spell after her betrayal). Xanatos probably realized by then that Goliath was more useful to him alive than dead, making Derek's desire to kill Goliath... problematic.

All true, but also keep in mind that he went there to save Sevarius, not Goliath. He didn't even expect to find Goliath: "Oh, hello Goliath. Didn't even notice you there."

Nuance. Xanatos is corrupt and, especially in the early seasons, unscrupulous... but he's not just out-and-out evil. If he really wanted to kill the Manhattan Clan, them hanging out in the police clocktower wouldn't really stop him, with his resources and intelligence he could track them down and smash them during the day (or bomb the clocktower to make a really thorough job of it). Much like Goliath himself says about killing in battle in one of the first episodes, it may be that while Xanatos is perfectly fine with killing someone in a standup fight, murdering them unawares or just letting them die when he could save them with minimal effort either offends him or, less charitably, he considers it beneath his dignity.

Xanatos said it himself: killing the Gargoyles would be a waste. It's important to note that before "The Cage" aired, Goliath and company had already: saved Fox, the love of Xanatos's life; (accidentally) helped Xanatos go back in time and secure his fortune; helped save New York from Demona's spell; and proved their strength by defeating the upgraded Pack. Xanatos may not know how the Gargoyles will help him in the future, but he's not going to waste a valuable resource like Goliath to keep an angry Talon on his side.

So, does Demona never ever sleep after Puck's spell? She's gargoyle by night, and human by day. Is it Puck's magic that keeps her awake?

Who says she needs to stay awake in both forms? She could choose a time to sleep.

Actually, maybe she doesn't need to sleep, at least not every night. When you're immortal, all the rules about what it takes to keep your body healthy and alive (like sleep) go out to the window. True, she's not invincible, but no matter how hurt she gets, she can't exsanguinate, suffocate, etc; no matter how long she goes without eating, she might be in pain, but she can't starve; there's no telling how much (or little) going longer without sleep than what would kill a normal human/gargoyle could damage Demona's body or mind since, unlike mortals, staying alive doesn't depend on her health.

Pure, utter, fetish material to certain groups of people... * cough*

Word of God is that Demona sleeps for a few hours as needed (usually in the day), and she gets enough to keep her energized, but probably not enough that it does her mental stability much good...

And, no one sleeps 12 hours anyway, most people will be awake most of the day and most of the night, even if you have an 8 hours sleep cycle.

During the thousand year sleep, why didn't Goliath or any of the clan suffer from erosion damage at all?

Well, they don't actually turn into stone, but merely an organic substance that seems like stone. That might account for some of it. Also, it was a magic spell.

Like the above troper mentioned, the "stone" is organic, and as such can heal from the (very slowly induced) erosion damage.

Plus, y'know, the whole stone sleep is a result of magic, which by its very nature tends to tell natural laws like yielding to time "Go pound some other rock into sand".

Is Lexington a child, or is he just short?

He's just short. He's the same age as Brooklyn and Broadway.

As said he's the same age, roughly, as Brooklyn and Broadway. But by Gargoyle standards they are all children. they were in their early (Lexington) to late (Brooklyn) twenties at the beginning of the series and gargoyles aren't considered adults until into their thirties.

Close but not quite. Due to the way gargoyle breeding cycles work, the Trio all hatched on the same night. By the time of "Hunters' Moon" they're roughly biologically equivalent to nineteen year old humans.

According to World of God Goliath is a mere 29, Angela is 19 and Hudson is 59. I think it's safe to say either Word of God clashes rather badly with the undisputable canon or Goliath was severly mistaken about how quickly Gargoyles age by comparison to humans. Because if the Trio are in their early to late twenties and are the biological equivalent of teens Angela should be the biological equivalent of a pre-teen and clearly she's supposed to be if younger than them only slightly. She certainly isn't supposed to be a prepubecent nine year old about whom a bunch of teenagers are having clearly sexual fantasies.

I just went onto the Ask Greg site. He says Goliath and Demona are about 30 biologically, which means in real time they're about 60. Angela is 19 in Gargoyle years, but in real years she'd be 38.

Right, according to the official timeline, Goliath and Demona hatched in 938. The trio hatched in 958. The events at the end of season two took place in 1996. Chronologically, discounting the 1000 years they slept, Goliath and the trio are 58 and 38 respectively. The gargoyle aging rate means that they are, biologically, what humans would equate with 29 and 19.

Why does he look so much younger in mirror episode?

Mainly because he's short and skinny. Without any of the social signifiers that normally help us pinpoint age, like dress, grooming, and social setting, that sort of body type will normally have people underestimating a person's age.

Stone sleep regenerates disease and light to moderate wounds, but not serious ones like lost limbs. Presumably, his eye was damaged beyond regeneration. Odd that his scar around the eye never healed, though - but scars are cool, I guess.

This troper distinctly remembers the stone sleep healing what would have otherwise been serious and even fatal wounds, like the episode where Hudson is stalling Demona after she incapacitates Goliath with such a wound.

I always viewed it as a really good nap. They heal very similar to the way we do. Sometimes, some injuries don't heal completely or properly. So, no regenerating whole limbs and scars are left.

The injury was originally caused by a magic strike from the Arch Mage, so that may have something to do with it not healing.

Or possibly Goliath's wounds could have been healed if he could only survive long enough for natural healing processes to occur and the sleep speeds that up, whereas Hudson's eye damage was the kind that no amount of time will heal. Likewise, in the not-canon third season, he starts to go blind in his good eye. Most forms of blindness are not self-healing.

Although not canon, that's one of the episodes this troper wishes were so. It was really really damn good despite no wise men at the helm. Also, we got to see Robbins again, whom I really wish would become an ascended extra. He could probably join Macbeth on the talk show circuit to defend Gargoyles.

Hopefully Weisman will add it to the comics at one point, but with more intelligent antagonists. He HAS mentioned liking it IIRC, possibly the only one of Chronicles he did.

The full story is a little more complicated than that. Suffice it to say that all of the Chronicles are personally painful for him to watch, and more to the point he hasn't actually seen any of them other than "The Journey" since the late Nineties. But he doesn't hold the overall low quality of the season against the new creative staff, who were placed under ridiculously tight deadlines and cost-cutting measures as a result of Executive Meddling, and so he slipped a line from the episode into canon as "a nice tribute to all the hard work that the TGC crew put in, with little thanks or reward."

Think of it in the context of the other key events of the episode: the Archmage's power at this time belied his name, and he was clearly desperate and barely able to support himself on his own. After the attack costs him his eye, Hudson retires from active leadership, allowing Goliath to succeed him. Look at the frayed fringe on Hudson's wings — possibly like the eye, they may not be a sign of discontinuity, but him simply getting old, and his recuperative abilities fading.

As stated above, the injury to his eye was caused by a magic strike. We have seen gargoyles recover from injuries given by typical battles. Good old fisticuffs, bladed weapons, lasers and the like. But magic is an entirely different thing, and the show made it clear how enormously powerful, varied and even fickle it could be, so it is highly likely that gargoyles may not be able to heal wounds caused by magic, no matter how much stone sleep they get for the rest of their lives.

What is that thing around one of Fox's eyes? I assumed it was makeup, until the werewolf episode and her eye still had the blue thing around it in wolf form.

Given that it's been hinted that Fox has led a fairly wild life, it could be a tattoo. (Which she could conceivably use makeup to cover up if necessary.) For magical purposes, that might make it a valid part of her body...and arguably a symbol of her true inner nature, which could explain why the Eye of Odin (which generally seems to enhance just that) didn't change it.

I was always under the impression it was a birthmark, and most likely a sign of her inherent fey heritage.

That always confused me — it looked metal to me, and an actress/businesswoman with a bionic face was a little out of place.

Why didn't Goliath just use the Phoenix Gate to return to Manhattan as soon as he left Avalon? In later episodes he says he wants to see it all through, but he didn't have such an attitude when first venturing from Avalon.

Goliath had reservations about using the Phoenix Gate. Eventually he destroys it so no one can.

He didn't destroy it, he just put it beyond anyone's reach. But yeah, like he says the episode M.I.A., he swore never to use the Phoenix Gate and only used it when he had no choice left.

Does it bug anyone else how disproportionately skilled a fighter Elisa seems to be?

For someone who has no special training (at least that we know of), she's successfully taken on opponents that should logically be able to wipe the floor with her. One can fanwank that the Gargoyles have given her some training offscreen (although, I feel, not enough to take on Demona), that still doesn't explain the commandos in "Awakening", particularly since Xanatos isn't the type of guy to anything but the best. A subtle case of Power Creep, Power Seep?

In Real Life, some cops also study martial arts. Go to any good martial arts school and ask around. Plus, as a relatively petite female, it would have been the smart thing for Elisa to do.

Also keep in mind that Xanatos did not in fact want Goliath dead in Awakening; his commandos were plants to frame the rival company. They didn't have to be competent; their job was to either find a statue or be seen as hostile by the gargoyle. Using anybody capable of actually hurting Goliath would've been dangerous.

Well, you're assuming most gargoyles would bother learning any formal fighting techniques in the first place. Most of the time they seem to fight in a very primitive and "bestial" manner (in case of doubt, throw something large), relying more on their superior strength and speed than on any formal training. (Notice that the only member of the Manhattan clan we ever see regularly using a weapon is Hudson, who is older than dirt even by gargoyle standards. No doubt he's compensating for his fading strength due to advancing age.) Demona, being effectively un-killable, has even less incentive than the average gargoyle to learn how to fight properly.

Ehh...while I suppose there's enough evidence of that within the cartoon, there's also enough dialogue to suggest that we're meant to take the Gargoyles as superb fighters. There's Xanatos' comment that Goliath was "the greatest fighter that ever lived". Elisa's warning that Goliath had never actually beaten Demona, and the fact that Demona can hold her own against Macbeth, who does have training and experience. Heck, power and skill levels are all over the place in the cartoon in general—is that a trope?

As clan leader Goliath may be an exception to the rule. I imagine gargoyle society works in a very "pack"-like way, with the roughest, toughest m* ther-f* cker in the clan usually being the one in charge until someone else challenges them and forces them out (Demona herself advises Goliath to overthrow Hudson because he's too old and weak to lead). Also, most of the time when Demona overpowered Goliath she did so through trickery or using some sort of magic or high-tech gadgetry. Off the top of my head I can't think of an instance where Demona actually bested Goliath in single combat. I think Elisa's warning to Goliath was in reference to the fact that he'd never captured or killed her, only foiled her schemes. That said, I can't really think of an explanation for the Macbeth issue...

Every time this has come up in the series, it's been at the discretion of the clan leader. Hudson chose to step down in favor of Goliath, and Goliath chose to make Brooklyn his second-in-command due to his clear-headedness in that episode.

But we don't know if that's how it works all the time. Hudson was wise enough to know when he'd become too old to lead the clan like he used to and humble enough to let someone else take the reins. If Hudson were a little less intelligent and a little more prideful it could easily have gone the other way.

I'd Take a Third Option and say that gargoyle clans used to work on a primarily Authority Equals Asskicking basis, but as their society developed it became a more formalized arrangement where the current leader would look for whichever clan-member they thought had the best leadership potential and then make them second at least in part to groom them for the job. If you look at Long Way to Morning, Demona seemed to think that Goliath challenging Hudson would be a viable way to take over as leader, while Goliath himself thought that he should wait until Hudson was willing to hand the job over.

Indeed, and other gargoyle clans that we meet during the Avalon world tour like the one from London, Guatemala and Japan also seem to handle leadership that way, especially in the case of Japan were the rogue gargoyle Yama find it easy to betray the clan than to fight for leadership and enforce his will. Of course, these are very civilized clans living among humans for centuries, most likely things in the Middle Ages were less polite.

Elisa only beat Demona when she was in human form. Demona relies primarily on her gargoyle strength and agility to overcome enemies. She doesn't know how fight without that, and consequently gets her ass kicked by a police officer who's presumably had basic self-defense training at the very least.

One presumes, too, that the real life stigma of being a cop-killer translates into the Gargoyles' Manhattan. Fairly few characters ever intend Elisa bodily harm, much less death. Demona's the big exception.

Captain Chavez confirms that in "Deadly Force": "No one hits a cop and gets away with it. No one!"

Doesn't bother me. Didn't really bother me the first time around, just because when I was younger I generally just expected the stars of cartoons to be action heroes, but especially not after reading The Dresden Files. You want a real overtrained cop (perfectly justified in-universe), look no further than Karrin Murphy. Just assume that Elisa has probably been taking martial arts courses since she was young, has had her reaction time and responses honed by dealing with above-human threats since she started hanging out with Gargoyles, and be happy. Also who else would squee over a buddy cop movie with Elisa and Karrin? ... Anybody? Just me? Maybe throw Renee Montoya in there for good measure?

Fun fact: Butcher's a fan of Gargoyles, and Karrin and Susan are based on Elisa (Murphy got the job and skills, Susan got the looks), while Marcone is partly based on Xanatos.

Didn't know that Butcher was a Gargoyles fan, but in hindsight it certainly makes sense. Always got a decidedly Xanatos vibe off Marcone, anyway. Now I kind of want to see how a Demona/Nicodemus Villain Team-Up would go. Bring on that apocalypse!

The Weird Sisters' spell that gives Demona and Macbeth synchronized immortality uses the line "As long as one lives, the other shall live" to establish how one cannot be killed (unless one kills the other, of course). Could there be room for a loophole here?

Would they both die if, say, Macbeth killed himself?

Pretty sure Demona has to kill him. Eight hundred years of suicidal angst, you figure he'd have to have tried at least once by now.

Would they both die permanently if someone else killed them both at the exact same time?

No. They both "die" temporarily whenever one of them is killed while they're in close proximity, as shown in City of Stone IV. I don't think killing them both at the same time would change that.

Is there ever a point where they're fighting each other and one of them stabs/hurts themself to make the other go off balance?

The theme here is Shakespeare. I'd say one of them being hit by a poisoned dagger and killing the other right before dying isn't too far fetched.

Also worth remembering that the timeframe involved means Macbeth was raised Catholic, and suicide's a mortal sin. If he dies fighting Demona, at least, he can make an argument that he's stopping the immortal evil he unleashed. If he kills himself directly, he's giving in to despair. Not that this explains why Demona doesn't amputate his arms and legs.

Considering the synchonization, I wouldn't rule out that doing so would cause Demona to lose feeling in her own arms and legs. At the very least, it's probably not a risk she's willing to take.

Forget the fact that he's married at the time and his genuine love for Fox was shown to be a very important part of his character. He is not the type of villain who lusts after or flirts with hot captives! Where did that come from?! (Before anyone says it was part of his act, this was at the point where he was explaining to Goliath and Angela that this was all just an act.)

Well he did say this was his "first stab at cliche villainy", for what it's worth. Still, I imagine he was just messing with Goliath's head (remember, he was actually talking to Goliath at the time, not Angela). He may not be the kind of villain who flirts with hot captives but he's definitely the kind of villain who takes sadistic pleasure in the discomfort of his enemies.

Xanatos is a bit of a Nerd in Evil's Helmet (also exemplified when bringing Coldstone to life in "Reawakening"). Is he normally the kind of bad guy who'd tie the pretty girl to the train tracks? Hardly. If a given plan calls for him to act like that kind of villain, though, it seems entirely in character that he'd play it to the hilt for fun (though he wouldn't take it to the same, near-constant extent that Sevarius or Thailog do).

A wild guess: Xanatos is subconsciously attracted to Goliath - he wears gargoyle Powered Armor shaped to have Goliath's face, and you could argue that Thailog is as much his son as Goliath's - and knows it, but he's still basically straight and devoted to Fox. And Angela is Goliath's daughter and has his coloring, and besides it would really bug Goliath, so... why not? Harmless fun.

Actually, I would argue that Thailog is more Xanatos's son than Goliath's - his personality is entirely shaped by Xanatos. I've always felt that Thailog was the primary catalyst for Xanatos's gradual change - being confronted with his own dark side made flesh; all of his vices with none of his few redeeming virtues (his capacity for love and at least vague sense of honour) was something of a shock for him. His comment "I think I've created a monster" is the first time we ever hear him express (what sounds like) genuine remorse.

What's weird about telling someone their daughter is lovely? I don't remember the exact quote, but...

Consider this: A man may go on a diet, but he will still look at a menu.

He sounds more like he's making casual conversation. The reason Goliath reacted badly was because his archrival was endangering his daughter, not because he complimented her.

Hudson's lecture to Demona about patience and age in "Long Way to Morning"

This piece of Fridge Logic hit me like a ton of bricks. One of Hudson's shticks in the series is that he is wiser and more experienced due to his age, and young people don't know how to wait and have patience. This is the central theme of the episode where Goliath is injured and Hudson flees from Demona until sunrise, telling her that he knows how to wait because he is old. The obvious problem with this, of course, is that Demona is much older than Hudson. Not only did she grow old in her own time before the Weird Sisters restored her youth, but she has lived for many centuries after that. She is much older and experienced than Hudson, despite having the physical abilities and looks of a gargoyle in her prime. So where does he get off lecturing her like she is just an impatient youth? If patience comes with age, she should have plenty by that point. Even if the gargoyles didn't learn about Demona's immortality until "City of Stone" (which they should have; didn't she tell Brooklyn about it in "Temptation?" Shouldn't he have said something?) it seriously undercuts Hudson's point.

A major part of Demona's character is that she hasn't learned everything she should have after being alive so long. In a lot of ways, she's still the same impatient, vengeful, deluded young gargoyle that she was back in Scotland.

Also, even given the knowledge in the abstract, the guy took a nap, woke up, and Demona seemed more or less the same age. Without any signs of her lifespan enforcing her centuries on this earth, it can be very easy to forget.

Both she and Xanatos lied to them. Remember, Xanatos told them that Demona was hit by the same spell and went through the same thousand year sleep all of them did. At that point, nobody corrected that piece of information, so as far as Hudson knows, she is younger than him. Though, as cocky as she is, one would think that would be the best time to correct him. "Fool, while you were sleeping, I fought the humans for centuries." or something.

One thing Brooklyn absolutely learned by the end of "Temptation" was "Don't trust Demona." I would expect him to assume her stories about fleeing from humans for centuries was another lie to convince him Humans Are Bastards. More importantly, aside from Demona's one line in "Temptation," the audience also had no inkling of her immortality by this point; we never saw her explain to Brooklyn, if she did, what "centuries long" meant. So, for all the Clan (Hudson included) and the viewers knew at this point when the show first aired, Demona is the same age she would be without the 1,000 year stasis, and Hudson is still the older and wiser...

...But even when we all realize Demona has lived centuries longer than Hudson, I agree the point still stands that Demona hardly grew or matured at all during the extra experience she gained. 1,000 years later, she's still a homicidal psychopath trying to get revenge on people who no longer exist just because she can't admit that she herself is responsible for what she claims drove her to seek vengeance in the first place! (You'd think she'd at least eventually get Bored with Insanity.) Hudson is way ahead of Demona in maturity and patience; that she isn't with those extra thousand years is pathetic (in the context of the speech and episode, at least).

It's not just that episode, it's a major aspect of her character. She's stayed largely unchanged since betraying Macbeth because to do otherwise would force her to face up to her own part in all the crimes she blames on humanity. She's a perfect example of the aesop about those who don't learn from history.

Why do gargoyles always strike such awkward poses before turning to stone?

They're always rearing up with their wings spread out in a pose that looks like they're about to pounce on something. Given that they sleep perched on the edge of a building, isn't that a little... dangerous? What if they fall over?

Remember the first episode where the vikings were afraid of attacking the castle because of the gargoyles? I imagine it's some sort of psychological warfare technique to help scare their enemies, and they never shook off the lifelong habit once they woke up in the future. That, and Rule of Cool. Still, it does bother me, too, that that they seem to stand so close to the ledge while choosing positions which seem so imbalanced... I mean, yeah, they can be pretty sure they are not going to move in the 12 hours it's going to take for them to wake up again, but still.

In the old prehistoric times, it may have been a defensive measure to scare off intruders during the day. In modern times (feudal period to now) it may be more of a camouflage. No one's going to look twice at a snarling stone gargoyle, but one watching tv or picking its nose will draw attention.

They stretch as wide as they can to optimize their sun gathering surface.

It's also possible that when they turn to stone, the bottom layer of their feet molds together with the stone of the wall. Not enough that, say, you'd damage the gargoyle if you lifted him or her from the stone while they slept, but enough that the gargoyle isn't going to fall over easily.

Not all of them do it too, Goliath often sleeps crouched in a position reminiscent of "The Thinker◊" and other times even the trio sleep in more stable positions and rarely strike the same pose twice. It's probable that they just strike whatever they think looks "cool" based on their mood at the time. Hudson usually strikes the same pose leaning forward with his sword drawn.

Oberon puts all of NYC to sleep in "The Gathering." How does this not kill thousands of people (in planes, trains, automobiles, hospitals, etc etc)?

It did. Word of God says it did, and only in Oberon's mind could this be summed up as "a midsummer night's dream".

Oberon may have simply magic'ed things to work out. He is Oberon after all and that sort of thing seems well within his power.

No, he didn't. See above.

Word of God is canon, of course, but if you're looking for an answer that doesn't involve New York ignoring thousands of unexplained deaths, I'm partial to "Titania took care of it off-screen." She's at least the second most powerful being in the whole show, and while she's not nice she's willing to help out lesser beings like humans and gargoyles. I could see Titania spending a few minutes saving most of New York while Oberon focuses on Xanatos. Maybe even throwing in a "chemical spill/gas leak" cover-up to explain why everyone went to sleep, if she's worried about the masquerade.

The same thing can be asked of "City of Stone". Realistically speaking, simply having one of the worlds largest cities out of commission for five to ten hours two days in a row would be enough to cause a nationwide panic.

City of Stone actually did have several car wrecks in the streets. As for hospitals, City of Stone has the excuse of them being, well, stone. If they're made of stone, then whatever is killing them will be put into stasis. Sun rises, and the doctor continues work as usual, and doesn't think anything of it until he glances at his watch.

It's not physical damage I'm talking about. It's the fact that one of the economic centers of the world stops working from 7:00 p.m. to 6:00—remember, the story takes place shortly after Halloween—for two days. Just imagine the amount of airplanes JFK or La Guardia would have moved in that time, that it didn't. Best case scenarios, we're talking about dozens of planes that had to be rerouted—worst case, we had pilots or passengers turning to stone in mid-flight—instant broken masquerade. What's more, there's the uncertainty, the average yuppie couple has no idea that the event won't happen again, and will react accordingly. This is all glossed over.

And what people thought when they turned back and spotted the former statues Demona had smashed?

Or, for that matter, the ones who only suffered non-fatal injury?

Why didn't we get to see Gargoyle-Xanatos in "The Mirror"?

It would have been awesome!

Awesome for some, fetish for others. Still, seconded like WHOA.

Because it would have been very suspicious that Owen wasn't there.

Not necessarily. the audience could presume Owen was off duty or performing some errand. (The first assumption would have been correct, of course.)

Well, from the writing perspective, while it would have been amusing and fascinating to see, it wouldn't have actually contributed anything to the story or progressed the plot. Just the opposite, it would have stopped the story progression completely for the scene, derailing all the very fast-paced momentum they'd created up to that point.

Though I can't deny how delicious the irony would be in a quick scene where the Gargoyles say something like, "Wait a minute... is EVERYONE in the city affected by this spell?" And then we get a jump-cut to Gargoyle Xanatos looking out the window at his home, and suddenly looking right down the camera lens and commenting to himself "Ever get the feeling something's out of place and you just can't put your finger on what it could be?" before cutting back to the clan and the rest of the story.

"The Mirror" is one of the best episodes in the entire series. But even with all the magical stuff, there's one thing I don't buy. When Demona fights the Gargoyles, she shoots out a shop window with a weapons display, providing the Gargoyles with swords, shields and axes with which to arm themselves.

Just how many shops in downtown New York have window displays of medieval weaponry? Real stuff too, not cosplay replicas. Of all the stores in all the city, Demona just happens to fire at the one that gives her targets exactly the sort of weapons they are trained to battle with.

I say chalk it up to Puck screwing around to make things interesting.

Um the entire city was "always gargoyles" while it was probably beyond Puck's power to completely rewrite the entire architecture I'm sure wares and fashion were adjusted.

No, they obviously weren't. All the former humans are still wearing human clothing (a few girls even smirk at the normal Gargoyles, who are still in loincloths). And inanimate objects in general don't seem to have been affected; a statue (which really exists in New York, btw) looked the same as usual, without changing from human to gargoyle. And Demona's weapon, a high tech gun, certainly didn't become a sword or anything.

I don't know about NYC in 1994, but there's a place that sells real and display weaponry in the main street of Sydney.

Given NYC being NYC, it would be kind of surprising if there wasn't at least one around.

At the end of City of Stone, why didn't the jets set off the flammable gas?

Xanatos mentions that he has to blow up the entire Steel Clan just to get the gas to ignite, and needs the help of the Gargoyles as well in spreading the gas around.

Word of Gay

Isn't it kind of a bad idea for such an endangered species to have any homosexuals? They can only breed three times in their life, so every gay couple is six children that won't be born. Or if that bothers you, why did Greg establish they can only barely sustain their population like that? Or if that bothers you, why must they be universally monogamous?

We don't know how Gargoyles react to homosexual individuals... or asexuals. Or even if there is an uneven number of male and female gargoyles. For all we know, they might have a law of every gargoyle getting a mate of their opposite gender just for breeding purposes. If they happen to fall in love, well, kudos for them.

There's historical precedent for this, I presume Gargoyles handled it the same way as ancient pre-Christian societies. Homosexuals were still bound by honour, family, and fealty to 'live long and prosper,' and would sleep with concubines, sometimes marry and keep the other man/woman on the side, or just take any undesirable member of the opposite sex to bear their progeny while they spent most of their nights with their true love. There was still much stigma against those who never ever ever wanted to touch a member of the opposite sex though, since they were seen as avoiding their natural duty. (It also didn't help that the Camp Gay leaders who did manage to rule for awhile were truly and utterly horrid and Depraved Bisexuals without the bi.)

That'd be a good thing to ask him, but so far it sounds like Greg has said they're definitely totally monogamous.. Goliath and Demona "divorcing" is a nearly unheard-of thing.

This troper personally asked Greg if gay gargoyles might mate (assuming an unmated female was present) with a female once every twenty years for the purpose of procreation. Greg responded that he doubted that would happen, since if the population is that low, one extra egg probably wouldn't make much difference.

You're forgetting one of the basic tenets of evolution. Every present-day trait is an adaptation for a past need. Turning to stone every morning is also inconvenient but they still do it because they needed some way to sleep safely. I imagine that homosexuality works the same way.

No, that's not how evolution works at all. Every present-day trait isn't "an adaptation for a past need;" I'd love to know what past need freckles were for, or what past need made it so that those of us with Irish skin practically burn to a crisp. Present day traits are traits that just haven't proven bad enough to prevent the people with those traits from reproducing.

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that homosexuality is a born-in trait passed on genetically, then it likely would have been bred out had it not been for people being forced to reproduce as their 'duty' simply because homosexual sex would obviously not lead to children.

Easy answer to the "Irish skin" part. The British Isles frequently experience cloud cover that blocks out the sun. The northern latitudes also mean that the winter days are short and people are going to be fully clothed pretty much all year round. That means the only people who won't get rickets (a bone disease which is a very powerful selective force since it can both cause a fetus to not properly develop and may also result in a girl's hips being deformed enough during puberty to make childbirth impossible) are the ones with very little melanin in their skin. Those same people are not as well adapted to sunny climates and burn easily as a result.

Sorry I mis-uh typed. When I said "traits" I was talking about things like eyelids and sleep patterns. Eyeballs need protection so over time eyelids came into being.

Again, that's not how evolution works. A species doesn't evolve things because they need them. They have random mutations. If a randomly mutated trait helps a given individual reproduce, then it's kept and passed on. If a randomly mutated trait prevents an individual from reproducing, then that trait is lost. It's not a case of a species subconsciously deciding, "I'm tired of my eyes getting poked all the time. Let's get to work on eyelids so my great grandkids can cover their eyes."

Hell, to use the example of the stone skin, Word of God is that it's an obsolete, and currently detrimental, trait of the Gargoyle species. It was a beneficial adaptation when they first evolved (they could sleep without any fear of being killed), but became a liability when men's technology advanced to the point they could break stone.

This troper read once in a site that the turning-into-stone-at-night thing wasn't even a natural characteristic of the gargoyles but a result of a massive spell placed on them sometime around 1 AD (this is a magically-ridden universe, after all). Of course, it might not be a official explanation and just well intentioned Wild Mass Guessing.

Turning to stone was always a biological characteristic of gargoyles. The spell mentioned was a "modesty" spell the Romans put on the gargoyles to make sure their clothing and personal items also turned to stone with them, because they were apparently tired of the gargoyles going around naked all the time.

One of the current theories of human sexuality is that the same genes that make a woman especially fertile make a male homosexual. This means that the daughters of the woman carrying the fertile genes would likely be very fertile, and the sons would likely be homosexuals. In this way homosexuality is never "evolved out" of the species. Since gargoyles only reproduce a set amount of times in their lifetime, this is probably not the reason for gargoyles, but my point is that just because a trait seems like it should have been bred out of a species doesn't mean it will be. Evolution is complex.

Yup, and there are lots of hereditary medical conditions that cause infertility in humans and still manage to be carried into new generarions, I think the term is "dormant" genes. A good example is how people with Autism and Down Syndrome normally do not reproduce and yet their conditions are genetical and run in families.

That theory could still work. Even though they only breed three times, being more fertile may help prevent miscarriages or help them actually get pregnant to begin with. and to answer the first question, yes, Lexington being gay would probably damage his endangered species. But that wouldn't stop him from being gay. If peacocks were to become highly endangered, the long tails on the males that stop them from flying well wouldn't just vanish. As stated above, the stone sleep was useful before the creation of tools. Once tools were created, it became a disadvantage, but the genes weren't there for the trait to go away. Animals may display homosexuality. If those species become endangered, it won't necessarily go away.

Lex could always donate his sperm to a female who was lesbian, widowed or just couldn't find/didn't want a mate.

Skipping the 'why are there gays?' question in favor of "why do they have such a ridiculously low birthrate and virtually universal monogamy?"

In Universe: Prior to the rise of human civilization, Gargoyles virtually never died by any means other than old age; not many things can harm them, and for those that do, the stone sleep takes care of anything that isn't "instant traumatic death". The big killers of human history - disease and injury - just don't apply to gargs. Given that, it's conceivable that they developed a birth rate that keeps the population stable, with very little wiggle room. It also helps explain why their population crashed so catastrophically when human civilization did take root; they're biologically incapable of bouncing back after widespread deaths.

Meta-wise: (a)Greg's more or less stated that gargoyle culture is a bit of personal wish fulfillment/idealization on his part. (b) He's not a biologist or a mathematician.

While it might not be beneficial for Lexington to be gay, considering that the main characters only know three female gargoyles (Coldfire doesn't count) means it would not cause too much harm. Also, gargoyles are not completely monogamous - otherwise the Elisa-Goliath-Demona-Thailog-Delilah thing would not have happened - so it's possible that someone else could cheat to make up for it. Mostly the fact that Lexington is most likely to figure out how to clone gargoyles kind of balances it out. As for the possible advantages to Lex being gay, his mom might have had twins or it could be linked to his being a genius, which would benefit his clan by allowing him to create better weapons for the humans who protect his clan during the day.

Wouldn't Demona have died if "Operation Clean Sweep" worked?

So Demona got it into her head that releasing a super virus that would kill all of humanity (and only humanity) would be a great idea. But if Macbeth can only die if Demona kills him wouldn't she end up dying as well?

I'm almost certain Greg has answered this before, but in any case, I think the opposite is true; Demona is protected by the Praying Gargoyles, so Macbeth probably is too. However, there's the issue of Demona being human for at least part of each day...

Pretty sure I read that if the spell binding Demona and Macbeth interpreted the plague as a successful attempt to kill Macbeth, it would kill Demona too. If it didn't, both would be protected. Which actually happened would depend on whether Demona was actively thinking about and hating Macbeth when she released it.

The question is 'Would Demona care if it killed her?' She may consider her death worthwhile if it frees gargoyles from the dangers of humans.

Even if it didn't, wouldn't she die a horrible death every morning for the rest of eternity as a result of her plague?

If the Gargoyles break out of their stone forms every night, wouldn't they eventually shrink into oblivion?

When the sun rises, their bodies fade into stone. Then, at night, the Gargoyles break out of the stone as if it were layered on top of them. Unless they end up regaining that fraction of an inch of surface area each night somehow, their body mass would eventually diminish to the point that the layer of stone they'd break out of would compose their entire body, thus either killing them or condemning them to a permanent petrification.

It's possible that when they "turn to stone" they are simply growing a thin layer of rock over their skin, and that's what shatters. Still, they'd have to eat quite a lot to create enough rock mass for every time they sleep...

Simple. As they sleep they grow a new layer of organic skin (healing small wounds in the process), which pushes out to break the old layer of skin, which is now rock.

Besides, they eat. A lot.

Probably similar to humans too, just sped up very quickly. After all, the majority of dust is dead skin cells. It's as likely that during the day, they 'grow' as they heal/gain energy. The stone becomes brittle due to the day-long growth which lets them break through. The stone could very well also be similar to fat, urine, and other waste products.

People and other animals expel matter (by going to the bathroom, sweating, shedding dead skin cells, losing hairs, et cetera) every day, as do plants (releasing seeds, losing leaves, being cut with a lawnmower, et cetera), without shrinking into oblivion. They just need to take in at least as much matter as they lose. So do gargoyles, with the added benefit of being solar batteries (meaning they don't necessarily use matter to fuel their bodies as much as we do).

So how does an egg of that size...

...come out of some hips like Demona's?

Probably the same way a human baby comes out of human hips. I guess that includes the pain... So we can only hope that the eggs come out smaller and eventually grow in the rookery. (After all, in the first episode we see that the rookery contains some well-tasting slime - "nutrition fluids"?

Wordof God states that the shells of the eggs are leathery and flexible at first, like a reptile's egg, but they quickly harden once outside the mother's body.

I am both relieved and shocked that he actually cared enough to talk about the structure of Gargoyle eggs and how they come out.

I mean, Goliath is the lawful leader of the Manhattan Clan, and she is his biological daughter.

Well, there's the whole raised communally thing. Plus, Gargoyles don't use bloodlines to select leaders. The leader chooses a younger gargoyle as his/her second-in-command to be groomed for leadership. And Angela doesn't have an "I Want" Song. Every Disney Princess has an I Want song! If she did, I could see her having something like Belle's Reprise before she leaves Avalon and for after she's been living in the real world for awhile, something like "God Help the Outcasts". Just replace "Gypsy" with "Gargoyle".

Good point. Her song would've been great, maybe if they put it in shortly after she finds out she's Goliath's daughter and is angsting about wanting his love and affection.

Yeah, I could see that. In that case, her I Want Song would be something like "Proud of Your Boy", something like "I Can Go The Distance" and something like "Reflection".

That would be good. Her singing about trying to reconcile the Gargoyle Way with her human upbringing, and why she loves a man who is forced to withhold all fatherly love from her.

Well, he wasn't forced to withhold fatherly love from her by the Gargoyle Way. He's still one of her rookery fathers any way you slice it. He was distant with her at first for a number of reasons, including lack of experience and the fact that he didn't want her getting curious about her biological mother, Demona.

Not until they add her to the line, nope. And that line seems to be more about movies than series, anyways.

Actually, there's really just one requirement to be a Disney Princess... high sales figures. Which Gargoyles doesn't have.

Hard to say about Angela... but as the daughter of Queen Titania, Fox definitely should be!

Just how tall is the Eyrie Building?

Its height seems pretty variable, when compared against assorted NYC landmarks. This troper remembers at least one shot that showed it around half again as tall as the WTC Towers, but others seem to be all over the place. Is there at least a range of its maximum and minimum heights?

No, fog counts as fog. These spells work on an odd sort of semantics, that seems to be based on, "What would someone in the 11th century think of it?" Ergo, since when you see fog you generally don't go, "Hey, we're heading into clouds on the ground," it wouldn't count because it generally occupies a different classification in peoples' minds. When the spell was cast, "clouds" just meant "those big fluffy white things up in the sky".

Keep in mind, also, that this is Latin. Perhaps a Latin expert would be able to tell how precise the meaning of the word they use for cloud ("numos," I think?) is.

Not an expert, but they used "nimbos", which is objective plural of nimbus, which is specifically a raincloud. In order for the spell to break, the castle must rise above rainclouds.

According to wikipedia, nimbus clouds usually form at less than 2000 feet. So the building has to be at least that tall.

This might be the Spanish dub but they do refer to it as "the tallest building in New York" in one episode, thus it is taller than the WTC in this universe.

Why didn't Demona lead the other Gargoyles away from Castle Wyvern

Goliath left her as commander. All she would have to do is say that she's worried about Goliath and Hudson, order the other Gargoyles to come with her, and and leave the castle. Then, when the vikings came, the Gargoyles will be alive, and Demona could get what she wanted

She was going to. She approached Othello and Desdemona and was going to tell them everything, but changed her mind at the last minute. (Something she has been kicking herself for for the past millinium.) Remember, if she tried to lead the other gargoyles away, someone would ask why and Demona would either have to fess up or lie like the dickens. (At the time, she wasn't a practiced liar.) There would be little sense in leading the entire clan away over a vague worry over just two members, who are both seasoned warriors.

Additionally, remember how reluctant Goliath was to take the fight to the vikings in the first place. Gargoyles' instinct is to defend, not attack. Any threat big enough to convince the gargoyles to leave en masse is likelier to get them to fortify like mad.

Why are the names so inconsistent?

Scottish gargoyles have no names initially, aside from Goliath and Demona. However, those names were given to them by humans. Then came the Avalon Clan, who have names. That's still consistent, given that they were also named by humans. However, none of the other gargoyle clans seem to follow the "no names" rule. The gargoyles belonging to the London Clan, Mayan Clan, and Ishimura Clan all have names. Why is this?

They have different cultures(Like the Ishimura Clan facing towards those who they protect) and additionally, they had 1000 years worth of cultural evolution/assimilation with human

The clans in London and Ishimura have regular contact with humans and so have picked up the habit. In the Mayan clan, only the four pendant wearers have names (based on which gemstone they wear). It's just that, when we see the Mayan clan, the pendant wearers are the only ones alive.

Makes sense. It's hard to go back to being nameless once you're accustomed to using names. The real question is how a species which communicates through primarily verbal means ever managed to get along without names in the first place. "Hey! Hey you over there! You! What? No not you, I mean him. Him! The one with the green skin. No not him! The one with the horns and the green skin. No not that one either! The one with the web-wings, the horns, and the green skin! Yes! That guy! Go over there and tell him the yellow-skinned white-haired gargoyle wants to talk to him. Yes I mean me, not the other yellow-skinned white-haired gargoyle over there. Fuck, we really need names."

It could be that they didn't had names in the sense we have them(Being named by our parents/guardians) but only had nicknames(Like the way L As Names evolved) but they never acknowledged them as such. "Leader", "Second in command", "Red one", "Short one" etc could be easily used, as Gargoyles are wildly different one from another

Except that's exactly how real names would have evolved in Gargoyle culture. So if that's the case, why didn't they?

We didn't see enough of them to evolve? it's possible that by the time Demona got herself named, the other gargoyles were already getting names, or since they live longer and are fewer than humans, naming evolved much more slower than in humans

You misunderstand the issue. Gargoyles as a species are at least as old as homo sapiens and their cultural history is similarly at least as ancient as ours. They should have started using proper names about the same time as they developed language skills. For instance, if they started referring to each other by physical description (i.e. "Red one", "Short one", etc.) then those descriptions would themselves have become their names and the naming tradition would have naturally become part of their culture. But gargoyles explicitly don't do this. Even as late as the Middle Ages, thousands of years after gargoyles have become accustom to living and communicating with humans, they still refer to each other merely as "friend" or "brother/sister". It would be one thing if the gargoyles' natural method of communication were non-verbal (scent signals? telepathy?). They would technically still have "names" in the sense that they would each have a unique designation, but they wouldn't be able to translate those names into spoken language so they would appear nameless to humans. But the series never gives this indication. Long story short: It makes no sense for a species that communicates verbally to not use names.

Greg Weisman himself actually has some interesting food for thought on this very notion, albeit in the form of informal musings rather than conclusive Word of God. Regardless of whether or not you buy his reasoning, the post is definitely worth a read.

Word of God confirms that they're older than homo sapiens, by the way. Gargoyles are the first race, humans are the second, and Oberon's Children are the third. Actually, there was a Lost Race older than gargoyles, but they're extinct. Aliens like the Space Spawn and N'Kai (Nokkar's people) don't count in this tally, of course, only races native to Earth. The New Olympians don't either, because they're a hybridization of Oberon's Children with humans and animals, nor do vampires and were-creatures, who have a supernatural condition.

Gargoyles don't seem to interact with all that many others, instead forming small groups with their rookery siblings and mentors so there's little need for names as they'll always be easily identified since it's obvious who they'd be talking about.

Just a few thoughts: If a gargoyle wanted to indicate someone who was across the room and there was more than one gargoyle over there, instead of being lazy and standing there shouting "You there! The short red one!" they'd probably just walk across the room, put a hand on the shoulder of the gargoyle they wanted to talk to, and speak directly to them, which sort of eliminates that problem. In fight situations they'd probably just do things like shout "Someone needs to reinforce that hole in the wall!" and, being trained warriors who have likely worked together for years, the nearby gargoyles would look around, one of them would decide they were the best suited for that at the moment, and break off to go do so, rather than someone just arbitrarily shouting "Greenbutt, go reinforce that hole in the wall!"

This is part of the difficulty in viewing (as opposed to writing) Xenofiction (yet another genre category to which Gargoyles could be said to belong.) It's not conceivable to a human that a language would develop without proper nouns - to us communication begins with "I Tarzan. You Jane." It's a short, simple, but pretty sweeping way of saying, "These are not Rubber-Forehead Aliens. They're people, but they're not human people." The argument 'it makes no sense' is valid, but it's not supposed to make sense... to a human.

Personally I always felt they misshandle the part of the names, I would've go for the route of "You Can't Pronounce My Name" and then having the nicknames Eliza gave them for her comfort. But in any case we shouldn't judge a non-human culture by human standards, we do know that other intelligent animals use names; dolphines and crows use special sounds to refer to individuals of their own species, but apes don't (as far as we know) so maybe naming individuals is not something all intelligent species do.

In the fandom what is with all the Brooklyn x OC romance fics?

I get that Brooklyn gets a lot of sympathy because he ends up as a Heartbroken Badass multiple times over the course of the series, but now that his mate, Katana, has been introduced in canon, why are there so few fics featuring her?

Having a canon love interest or mate has never stopped any shipper from deciding their ship was the "true" one, story progression, canon, and common sense be damned.

Katana's personality was hinted at, but never really fleshed out. (Some fans weren't even sure if she knew how to speak English.) Plus, the fangirls all want to marry Brooklyn themselves, but since they can't, they have their Author Avatar do it for them.

Brooklyn and Katana's romance was only confirmed in the comics. Most fanfic writers are probably more familiar with the show, in which Brooklyn and Katana never even meet each other.

The Quarrymen luring the gargoyles into traps by relying on their heroic nature

In one episode the Quarrymen have a woman pretend to be in danger in order to lure the gargoyles into a trap. But wasn't the whole point of the Quarrymen that they thought the gargoyles were evil?

Agreed. Castaway in the comics is much smarter, but also refuses to admit the gargoyles may be capable of good.

Which makes sense as like Demona, Castaway needs a scapegoat for his mistake (crippling his brother), and the gargoyle race is it.

To back it up further, the show was never really consistent with itself. For one thing, the aforementioned finale has Castaway being a trusted citizen, even though an earlier episode had him arrested for driving a tank through the city.

Again, TGC doesn't count.

Why does the previous generation's Hunter use a laser handgun in the flashback to his fight against Demona in 1980?

I thought it had been established that laser guns were new and expensive machines at the time the series takes place? The only explanation I can think of is that it was a very advanced, rare prototype that he somehow got a hold of to help him during his showdown (for all the good it did him).

Lots of times, actually. Almost every time mobsters like Tony Dracon and Tomas Brode show up, their guns fire bullets. The cops carry regular guns as well. It's only the heavy hitters like Demona and Xanatos who have access to lasers.

Could also be a pistol that was censored into it. The only time a real gun can shoot real bullets is if it'll miss, which was averted once in the Extra Special Episode specifically about NOT using guns in the first place.

Why? Xanathos repaired him not once but twice. But for some reason, the face continues to be "one-half xanatos, one-half Terminator" instend of just choosing one or the other.

Rule of Cool. The robot face is menacing and connotes power, while the human half reminds everyone who the robot represents.

In-universe, I always figured that Xanatos saw how the original Coyote robot was damaged, decided he liked the look, and so retained it for later models. Since these later Coyotes were never intended to pass as Xanatos himself, there was no reason to hide their machine nature anyway.

Besides, it lends to the private joke and Stealth Pun: Xanatos never used the Pack as anything more than stooges, and every time he interacted, he betrayed them on some level. Coyote really was two-faced.

Xanatos moving Castle Wyvern

Castle Wyvern dates back to at least the 10th century, and was the site of two battles during a Viking invasion of Scotland. That makes it an important historical site. Even if the British government was willing to sell the land and ruins to an American businessman, why would they allow him to take the castle out of the country?

"Pay a man enough and he'll walk barefoot into Hell" — David Xanatos. (Yeah. He said "Hell" on a Disney cartoon. He's Xanatos, he can do that.)

To say nothing of the fact that, historical site or no, renovating such places is typically done by charity money, and Castle Wyvern is explicitly mentioned to be considered haunted in modern day — implying that virtually nobody goes there. If some rich American volunteers to rebuild and refurbish some dump in the middle of nowhere, then points out that his contract doesn't mention leaving the castle in the same place, is anyone really going to care too much?

Except that, in the process of moving the castle stone by stone to New York, Xanatos destroyed it; the fact that he reassembled it later on would be unlikely to placate the Scottish National Trust. If the organisation allowed him to destroy a Scottish castle then it would lose all credibility and, in all likelihood, any further funding from the Royal Family, so the reference to paying a man enough money does not stand up to close inspection. The fact that the castle is rumoured to be haunted would, if anything, increase its value as a tourist destination (look at Glamis Castle).

Xanatos doesn't just have money, he also has connections and competent employees, and is a certified genius himself. If any mere "American businessman" in the setting could find a way to legally acquire and move an entire foreign castle, it's him.

If being in the Illuminati doesn't make legal problems mysteriously disappear, what good is it?!

Aside from just because he could why did Xanatos move Castle Wyvern? The spell was about the gargoyles being above the clouds, not the castle. He could have stuffed them all in a jet flown above the clouds and saved millions upon millions of dollars.

Watch the show again. The spell does clearly say when the castle is above the clouds.

Remember, Demona is also at play here. Between her magic and hostility anyone who got in the way of reviving her clan was likely dealt with

What EXACTLY is Bronx

He's not a gargoyle. Gargoyles are intelligent and bipedal. He's shown roughly human level intelligence, at least the ability to do follow commands more complicated than you could give a dog not named Lassie. If he IS a gargoyle dog are their cat and bear equivalents? Goliath buys into Raven's lie of Gargoyles with extremely odd physical appearances rather easily and the London clan. .,.frankly it's a bit difficult to buy them all as the same species unless just like they were turned to stone for a thousand years that at some point in the distant past they WERE stone and some spell (perhaps a bored Puck) made them into what they are today. Otherwise Bronx makes no sense nor does the English group.

Bronx is a gargoyle beast. He is to gargoyles what chimps are to humans. As for the London Clan and why Goliath believed Raven, gargoyles have an incredibly varied phenotype and Goliath knows that. He knows that there are avianesque gargoyles out there, even if he never met one personally.

Why would Goliath know this? It seems that even in his time Gargoyles were incredibly rare and Brooklyn and Lexington aside almost all the gargoyles we meet follow the same body and skull type.

Maybe not so much "knew" as "hoped". He really wanted there to be more gargoyles in the world, so when someone with wings who could talk said he was a gargoyle, he didn't much question it.

Why wouldn't Goliath know it? He's seen an incredibly wide variation of traits just in his own clan. Heck, look at the variance just in the surviving members... they don't just have a huge variation of skin tones or something, Lexington has a whole different bone structure.

Do gargoyles have a favorite season?

Since gargoyles derive some form of sustenance from absorbing the sun's rays during the day and sleeping indoors is like skipping a meal for us, do gargoyles like the summer or winter more? In the summer they get to soak up the sun longer and would wake up more refreshed and energized, but the time spent awake would be much shorter. Contrariwise, the winter nights would be longer and so there's more time for doing things but the days are short (especially in Scotland) and they would feel a bit more lethargic upon waking. That's compounded by the fact that England and Scotland are normally pretty cloudy so unless gargoyles absorb UV rays from the sun instead of just heat and/or visible light I can't imagine their stone sleep is going to be nearly as rejuvenating as it would be for the Mayan gargoyles.

Could be if a gargoyle isn't refreshed enough by sunlight, they may make up for it by eating more or just physically relaxing. Much the way a young human going through a growth spurt needs to replenish their energy by eating or sleeping more. Goliath stated he was "Healed, but not whole" after his injuries sustained when Thailog crashed the Halloween party. Maybe with the days becoming shorter, Goliath was still recovering from his injury and couldn't do anything more strenuous than pick up Elisa for a kiss.

I suppose it would vary from gargoyle to gargoyle. Just like some humans love the summer because it means warm weather and beach parties, while other humans love wintertime because it means snowball fights and Christmas.

Gargoyles have no incest taboo

Think about it. We know for certain that Othello, Desdemona and Iago (the Gargoyles that made up Coldstone) are Goliath's rookerie mates. Clearly the the two men are fighting over her romantically and she's involved with Othello (the good one). Angela seemed to have been quite chummy with Gabriel. Unless the Gargoyles travel a lot more than is ever hinted at Angela is at best a second or third neice to the Trio and and worst a younger sister. It makes even more sense when you look at not just the Manhattan clan, but the Japan, Mayan, London and various groups Demona is shown with in flashbacks. It seems that female Gargoyles are absurdly rare.

Word of God is that gargoyles have some sort of scent markers that prevent close relatives from mating (and that Gabriel has an offscreen mate).

Which still does nothing to address how absurdly rare they seem to be. It's at best a three to one male to female ratio based on what we've seen. Saver perhaps the Avalon Clan is there even a clan and after Angela (a transplant from the Avalone Clan) does any group have more than a single female? Demona must have really gotten around in Ireland.

How would she be a sister or niece? Gargoyles hatched at the same time aren't siblings. And Demona was Goliath's rookery sister too.

How would she not be? Demona is one of three females shown in the Ireland clan. No reason why she couldn't lay several eggs over a period of time. It seems to be accepted that Gabriel and Angela are siblings and even if Word of God claims otherwise the fact that they are lovers is pretty solid cannon.

Gargoyles only lay three eggs total over the course of a lifetime and not at once. And we know Broadway is Hudson's son. Angela and Gabriel were rookery siblings, not blood relatives. And they were never mates.

The male-to-female ratio has very little to do with any aspects of gargoyle biology and a hell of a lot to do with the fact that the show was an action series aimed at pre-teen boys. If only there was a trope for it...

Also, gargoyles mate for life; with Goliath asleep, Demona never had a mate when she was a clan leader in Scotland (which I assume is what you mean by "Ireland") and therefore laid no eggs.

There are several male and female gargoyles in the Ishimura Clan, even if Sora was the only female given any focus (but only two males were). We only saw three members of the London Clan, with one female, Una, but their clan is much larger than three members. Only four of the Mayan Clan are still alive, and two are female.

As much as a I enjoy the series, I do hope Greg Weisman can someday bring closure to the series. But I still feel this sense of Status Quo; Demona never seems to learn anything and according to Word of God, would probably be hateful long after Goliath and the gang have perished. Xanatos will always be scheming, just not being overly antagonistic to the gargoyles. Have the villains developed that much, or is it merely a "shift of priorites"? To be clear, it's not that being complex villains is a bad thing, but I'm just wondering how to achieve a sense of closure.

Well, Demona's arc is supposed to be tied up in Gargoyles 2198, a spinoff that seems unlikely at the moment to ever get made. Her problem- both in this case and in-universe- is that she's deep, deep in denial about who exactly caused her suffering. But Xanatos certainly developed over the show's run, even if it didn't lead to a true Heel–Face Turn as much as a re-evaluation of his attitudes towards various other characters, and some of the other villains underwent pretty major changes (the Archmage died, Thailog got himself set up as a Corrupt Corporate Executive to rival Xanatos, Macbeth isn't even really a villain anymore, Coldstone's warring personalities got seperated into their own bodies, Castaway went from Hunter to founding his own gargoyle hate group, the Illuminati looked to have been taking a more direct role, etc.)

It's somewhat hard for Demona to change as not changinging is kind of her thing. She's gone a thousand years with little character development, aside from getting angrier, so it would take some serious big events to make her change now. Xanatos never really suffers for his set backs and in fact over time his efforts have rewarded him so why would he change them?

How come unlike other Disney shows, Gargoyles is not referred to with the Disney preface? I mean, it's literally not in the title of the series, which strange considering Disney's usual practice.

Gargoyles is a lot darker and more mature than most other Disney properties. It's possible Disney was afraid having their name directly associated with the show would damage their "family-friendly" image. And Greg Weisman might have thought that calling the show "Disney's Gargoyles" would have turned away older viewers who would see the word "Disney" and assume it was a light-hearted family romp.

Hunters, they make no sense!

The Hunters don't make any sense, there should either be a whole lot more Hunters or there shouldn't be any. Let's start with why there should be more. If the mantle is passed down to the next generation why hasn't it branched out into a fairly large organization by now? It's unlikely that whomever the Trios father was the very first Hunter in history to have multiple children. People had large families in olden times and considering how big a place the world is it wouldn't make sense for the Hunters to stay together either under those conditions three people searching three different locations makes more sense. After a thousand years of lets split up, then have kids who split up they'd be a fairly large group. Which would explain why the Hunter's in the past were able to find her on multiple occasions. There were a lot of people looking for her. If it works the way it's been explained however there shouldn't be any at all for two reasons. First Demona isn't stupid nor is she kind. I see no reason why she wouldn't have almost immediately after finding out that it passed to the next generation to simply kill a few kids. She would have saved herself a lot of trouble if right after she threw that Hunter off the Roof if she'd taken two extra seconds to slaughter three helpless children who were rushing towards the body. The other problem with it passing directly to a small group is that Gargoyles are sufficiently rare that I find it difficult to believe that Demona or even a living gargoyle was found frequently enough that you didn't occasionally go three or four generations without finding any proof that any such creature as a gargoyle even existed. If my grandfather spent his entire life looking for something that he couldn't find, and then my dad did the same I'd probably shrug my shoulders and walk away.

In order: A) People usually had large families in ye olden tymes. But there are always people who buck the trend. B) Even people who did have large families often ended up with much smaller families once disease, war, and infant mortality got to them. C) You're right, Demona isn't stupid. But that very point is probably why she didn't swoop down and kill the kids who rushed over to the body she threw off a roof. Swooping down and murdering a crowd of children is a good way to get yourself spotted and attacked by other passersby who could happen upon them, and then she's got an entire city of humans hunting for her. For that matter, why would she assume the kids were the family of the Hunter she killed? Why wouldn't she assume they were just a group of people walking the streets who came to see what all the commotion was about? D) The entire Hunter family was continuously tracking Demona for generations. Demona may be immortal but she still has her limits. She can only run so far, so fast, and she can't entirely avoid leaving a trail. Given that, why do you find it so implausible that every generation at least managed to catch sight of her at some point? Also, I think you greatly underestimate the power of propaganda. There are real life accounts of blood feuds (which is essentially what the Demona/Hunter conflict amounts to) that have lasted for many generations.

According to the comics, Demona almost did kill Jonny and Robyn when they chased her into the catacombs. She ran off when Jason fired a gun at her.

Greg Weisman has said there are still other branches of the Canmores out there with an interest in gargoyle-hunting, and also descendants that have lost touch with the Hunter tradition and are just regular people.

Children of Avalon vs Iron

We're told that the Third Race are vulnerable to iron and their magic cannot effect it. In the Gathering Part II Oberon and Titania seem to treat that rule as something closer to advice than an actual rule so what exactly is the limitation there? The first time he grabs an Iron Gargoyle it hurts him, for a few seconds but after that it seems to have no further effect and he doesn't throw it away immediately, he knocks one out of the sky with his magic, lifts up Xanatos wearing presumably Iron armor and then Titania freezes him. I know this guy is supposed to be the best of the best bar none but he really seems more mildly amused than threatened by all this. Heck until the very end of the fight when he's getting flustered it seems clear that he's more playing along than actually fighting.

Oberon is the strongest of the Third race so he's also the least affected by the vulnerability to iron, though it is still effective against him and interacting with it drains his strength (The Children of Oberon show their vulnerability more clearly since they have less power it's more easily restrained). Xanatos was affected like that because his head was exposed so he had a vulnerable point for Oberon and Titania's magic to affect him.

Gargoyle/Human relations

Is there any answer as to how humans and gargoyles allied and what caused them to break up? It's clear that gargoyles across the globe were once allied with the local humans in various mutual protection pacts. By the time the gargoyle story starts in 994 the clan we see are treated at best as second class citizens despite being a vital part of the defense and a few years later we see Duncan casually destroying gargoyles he finds during the day. Clearly in the past Gargoyles and Humans were on good enough terms that they started alliances and something changed. Is there any hint as to what it was or is that just a factor of they had to explain why there aren't gargoyles just as a part of regular society?

Possible explanation is the spread of Christianity. Gargoyles do look a lot like demons. Black cats were demonized, so maybe Gargoyles were to, for whatever reason the church felt they should.

Which doesn't answer what happened in Asia or the Americas where again gargoyles seem to have had a similar problem, a problem big enough that gargoyles are sufficiently close to extinction that until the end of the series there seem to be at best a few hundred humans who believe in them and they all believe their individual groups to be the last of their species. This breakdown was global.

Furthermore, there is no Biblical basis for the popular appearance of demons (horned humanoids with wings and tails). Demons in artwork were usually based on Christianity's real-world enemies, such as Jews (devils with large noses) or pagan gods (devils with goat legs like Pan). It is more likely that demons were based on the gargoyles rather than the gargoyles coincidentally resembling demons. So that leaves open the question of why the Church chose to demonize gargoyles in the first place.

Well, who benefits from the gargoyles and humans being turned against each other? The global scale does make coincidence feel a bit less likely than some enemy. Certainly there are heavy-hitters among the Third Race who might see this as an opportunity to slow the progress of humanity's new infatuation with iron (and other technology, but iron is the vital one from this perspective.)

Wouldn't wanting to slow the infatuation with technology (perhaps not iron though) benefit from having humans and gargoyles remain friends? Given how easily gargoyles seem to deal even with modern weapons I can't imagine wasting much time developing weapons with Gargoyles by my side. Now it might have slowed the progress from iron to steel which might justify it.

It was actually probably less the rise of Christianity (much as everyone loves to blame that for everything) and more the rise of Reason. Basically, someone who doesn't believe in magic hears tales of how someone out in Southern Hillswick On The Dale In Greenbrough claims their castle is defended by nonhuman creatures who are statues in the day and alive at night, and encourages everyone to mock and ridicule them until the inhabitants actually ask the gargoyles to go away so that everyone will stop treating them like backwards rubes. Add to that, the fall of feudalism probably caused it... humans stopped making castles and forts and temples the hubs of their lives, and thus spread out, and had less interaction with gargoyles, and eventually combined that with the rise of Reason and stopped believing in them completely.

That doesn't work. First gargoyles don't seem to be particularly shy. They would simply invite the non-believers down to see real gargoyles. Or send the Archmage/Magus/whoever the current high wizard was out to show them that magic is real. Second (and this also shoots down the Christianity problem and makes some member of the Third Race more likely) this breakdown was global. In Japan for example they still don't spread out (they don't really have anywhere to spread too) but they are a well kept secret there. What happened to the gargoyles in the Americas? Even in Europe by Macbeth's time gargoyles were incredibly rare (Demona seems convinced she's leading the last clan) but Duncan doesn't stumble on them during the day and wonder how statues ended up in cave. He knows what they are and that the correct answer is SMASH SMASHY SMASH! Something happened between Gargoyles and men.

According to Word of God, gargoyle-human arrangements, although more common in the past, were never ubiquitous, and often ended with the humans turning against their gargoyle protectors and smashing them out of fear.

Just what motivated Xanatos to create Thailog in the first place?

Xanatos is brilliant, deceptive, and would never accept being subservient to someone else. Why would he create someone just like him with the added bonus of Gargoyle Super Strength? How did he not anticipate that such a creature would betray him?

Well, Xanatos really, really wanted his own gargoyle, for starters. For another, think about Xanatos's own primary Pet the Dog quality- he genuinely loves and is loyal to his family. What's one of Goliath's defining traits? He loves and is loyal to his clan- in other words, his family. Xanatos no doubt felt that someone who combined his own traits and Goliath's and was programmed to view X as his father would, therefore, also exhibit strong familial loyalty, in this case to Xanatos himself. Unfortunately, the way things evened out Thailog wound up even more ruthless and amoral than his creator, which would be where the trouble started.

Why did Xanatos mutate Derek, Maggie and the others if he'd already had people working to create Thailog?

The episode "Double Jeopardy" seems to indicate that the cloning project was already underway long before Xanatos met Derek and was progressing very smoothly. So why bother going to the trouble of collecting some humans and mutating them into Gargoyle wannabe's?

While I would have to watch Double Jeopardy again to find out how far along the cloning project was it's worth noting a couple of things. The cloning process isn't perfect which eventually leaves Thailog as the sole surviving clone and the Mutates are superior to the Gargoyles in nearly every way. They don't turn to stone during the day, they fly instead of glide (not that the Gargoyles really seem to notice that they can't fly) and they can shoot lightning. The only reason the gargoyles come out on top in their battles is they are simply better fighters with more experience than the Mutates. Really the question is more why continue attempting to clone a gargoyle when it was apparently easier to create a superior creature.

Perhaps for once Xanatos was being sincere when he told Derek he "had no idea" Sevarius was abducting and mutatinng people. If Sevarius had used the same high-speed maturation techniques that the Thailog project involved, the first batch of mutates would have been ready at about the same time Thailog was. Two independent projects working toward the same end would be characteristic of Xanatos.

I think that mutating Derek beyond recognition was part of Xanatos' plan to steal him away from Elisa, and that the other mutates were just a means to that end, at least at first.

Well, Thailog needs his own clan now, doesn't he? And the mutates can protect him during the day, have a greater variation than just Manhattan clan and protect Xanatos from Thailog should things go wrong.

Wouldn't some of the Hunters have different last names if women are involved?

For example, let's assume other women besides Robyn were involved in the hunt. What if a daughter decides to get married and takes her husband's last name? She dies in battle one night causing her son to become the next Hunter. The son has his dad's last name, not her maiden name. There's no way they all have the last name, Canmore, if they had women involved. The only way for that to work is if the women kept their last names or never got married.

You seem to have answered your own question. The women kept their last names when they married quite possibly because they belonged to a fairly prominent family. As an earlier headscratcher mentions the Hunter Network as displayed doesn't make a whole lot of sense and there are probably tons of women who married out of the family to get away from insanity of searching for something that doesn't exist.

What if the original Hunter had killed Macbeth?

The original Hunter refused Prince Duncan's order to kill Macbeth because it would raise suspicion. Because of his defiance, Duncan decided to double cross him by revealing his true identity to Macbeth. Was Duncan hoping Macbeth would kill the Hunter or was he hoping they would slaughter each other? What if the Hunter had survived? Did Duncan have a backup plan in case Hunter started coming after him for revenge?

This is discussed on the main page under the Irony entry. If I recall correctly, it is Word of God that Macbeth being killed by the Hunter in the matter it would have happened, had Demona not intervened, was Duncan's plan. But Duncan may have felt the Hunter was a threat to him as well, due to the veiled hostility he showed him. Thus, Macbeth killing Gillecomgain, or vice-versa, was likely a Xanatos Gambit. But as noted under the Irony entry, it would have turned out better if Macbeth had been killed, since it would have put a stop to the chain of events Duncan himself started in getting Macbeth to not be king, but did anyway because of said events caused by himself. But maybe this idea could be discussed on the WMG page, seems to be an interesting concept. Not sure if that adequately answers it, but I feel Duncan is more cunning then the hunter because of this plan, and thus, either way it could have went, he likely would have became the hunter, although in the canon version of events, it also lead to him being defeated by Macbeth.

Why would Xanatos pick Goliath to be his "first" clone?

Xanatos always has plans on top of plans, so why wouldn't he pick one of the smaller (and thus easier to subdue) gargoyles to clone first— just in case the whole cloning thing didn't work out.

Because Xanatos doesn't want to make a weak clone—look at how all of the Steel Clan are modeled after Goliath. Xanatos wants the best of the best in everything he makes.

On Proteus's Escape

In the episode "The New Olympians", while Proteus's plan may seem ingenius at first watch, but Fridge Logic kicks in once one realizes that he had never known of Golaith's existence, let alone knew anything of his friendship with Elisa Maza, at the time he came to free her from her imprisonment. Does he have the ability to read people's minds and the audience wasn't informed about this?

Doesn't he has a window? Maybe he overheard the people yelling during the commotion.

How did Demona get that company up and running so quickly?

She only started turning into a human in a couple of years, how did she get that company started? It looked like a pretty fancy one.

She might have killed the company's original owner, took her place, and changed the name.

She might have more human allies than we're aware of. Several episodes suggest that however she might feel about humanity as a whole she's more than willing to work with Macbeth in the past and Xanatos on several occasions in the present. I wouldn't put it past her to have a human who handles her financial business. Thailog doesn't seem to have a lot of difficulty putting his money to work and I doubt Sevarius is the only human he deals with.

I imagine Thailog arranged most of it, even if Dominique Destine did the leg work. It was probably Thailog's idea to incorporate it, he was educated by Xanatos, and he's running the company in the comics while Demona is MIA.

How did the rest of clan feed itself during the Avalon World tour?

Elisa was the one who supplied the clan with food. With her gone on the Avalon World Tour, how did Hudson, Brooklyn, Broadway, Lexington and Cagney fed themselves?

In the show it's just ignored however inverse we don't really know how much money the clan has managed to gather just from stopped robbers and people they couldn't return the wallets to. Lexington is more than smart enough to figure out how to order a pizza. In addition the Gargoyles were on good terms with Matt Bluestone by that point and he would shop for them if need be. They were also on reasonably good terms with Talon and the Mutates who are shown to have human associates. Good enough terms at any rate that I doubt a request for food would be denied.

There are also a lot of rats and pigeons in New York, which could be hunted for meat, not to mention various food in dumpsters behind restaurants. Pride takes second place to a full belly once you're hungry enough.

The Gargoyles fed on sunlinght during the day in their stone form. Broadway in particular seems to like food but most likely more for the taste than for nourishment.

They stole what they ate, they've been doing that since the series started, we've seen them do it.

Seriously, their friends and family must be worried sick. In "Kingdom" it's revealed that the Manhattan Clan don't know where they are (and Eliza's cat hasn't been fed). Halcyon could have easily contacted them.

The same reason they didn't pick up a phone and call anybody. It simply didn't occur to them. It's been a while since I watched the show, I think the clan had a phone in the clock tower but even if they didn't at the least Eliza could have called Matt Bluestone who in turn could have told the clan the score and fed her cat. Halcyon is an extra step that assume they cannot find a phone at any of the places they were being dropped off. The fact that they didn't ask Halcyon actually makes a certain amount of sense. The episode starts with them deciding it was okay to "cheat" and let Halcyon take them home, screw Avalon sending them where they need to be. They want to go home. The episode ends with them rescuing Halcyon from himself and realizing that Avalon is a force for good and is sending them to places where they can make a difference. The important part here is that with that mindset they might have decided then that if their friends and family needed to know they'd find out. And a short while later it "randomly" dropped Eliza off near her mother.

Um, they did. In the episode, "Pendragon" when Arthur and Griff mention having seen Goliath, the gargoyles mention, well, exact quotes: "But Elisa's mother saw them in Nigeria!" "And Halcyon Renard saw them in Prague!" So, yes... it happened.

Elisa DID call Matt in one episode (the one with the Loch Ness Monsters IIRC) but he never got it. The scene showed that Matt's answering machine was full and thus her message never got recorded. Elisa wouldn't have known that, so she wouldn't have tried to call again. Thus resulting in the later comments from Elisa's mother of "We've been out of our minds with worry!" when her daughter pops up in Africa.

Is Macbeth the biological father of Luach?

Or is it Gillecomgain?

Since they have the exact same hair color, I'd say yes. Since there were no DNA tests at the time, a child's father was legally whoever his mother was married to at the time of birth. (Outright bastards were heavily frowned on.) At any rate, it was clear that Macbeth considered himself Luach's father and that's all that really matters.

How come Oberon isn't bothered that Titania has a kid by a mortal?

Given Oberon's ego, this troper is surprised it doesn't bother him.

A number of reasons. First he did divorce her, she was free to do what she wanted and he's not that petty. Second he banished her and all the others from Avalon so they would walk amongst mortals and learn to appreciate them as he does. Not that ever shows this love mind you. In the thousand years they've been wandering around I assume Titania has had several children, even at one a century that's ten! Finally there's his already mentioned ego. I don't think he's really capable of jealousy. Not in a beautiful he's a bigger man than that sort of way but more in an incredibly immature it doesn't occur to him to be upset about it sort of way. Notice as Puck is telling the story he's doesn't seem upset at all that Titania had a lover either.

He's got a child outside of his marriage to her, too. Merlin.

When you send someone to live among and as mortals for a thousand years you tend not to be surprised when they do just that.

Is Puck in full control of the Owen form?

This troper is confused about the Owen character. Is Puck really 100% in control of Owen, or is it like a Jekyll and Hyde thing. Owen and Puck have completely different personalities, in fact, they are total opposites. If Owen's personality just an act, then how does Puck not drive himself nuts playing this stoic human 24/7?

a) He says he finds it fun to act so opposite to his nature. b) As old as Puck is, he may have a slightly different perception of how long he's playing this part than a human does. c) Who says he's sane? d) There is at least one fanfic out there where Owen was a semi-autonomous creation Puck took control of whenever something 'interesting' was happening.

Why didn't Jason and Robyn Canmore clear the Gargoyles' names?

So, Jason and Robyn realize the error of their ways and wash their hands of the blood feud at the end of Season 2, right? Well, since they (well, Jon) were responsible for framing the Gargoyles for the attack on the police station, why didn't they come clean about this? Sure, Jon was the one who did it, but surely they would've been able to prove the Gargoyles' innocence without him,
right?

What do you think Jason is currently in prison for? Why was Robyn coerced into leading the Redemption Squad? Why do you think Jon had to change his face and identity? Everyone knows the Hunters blew up the clocktower. But the revelation that these big, scary, winged beasts exist and are flying around New York City would always be bigger news. This isn't Spider-Man being framed by a villain and smeared by the Daily Bugle. As far as the public is concerned, gargoyles aren't sapient beings. They're dangerous animals, beasts, monsters, maybe even demons.

Anton Sevarius making himself look older

I understand Xanatos wanted to trick Derek, but why make Sevarius look like a stereotypical 1930s mad scientist?

For fun? Sevarius certainly seemed to have enjoyed playing the role.

Why did Taurus lie and why didn't Eliza pick up on that?

Taurus initially states at the meeting that it was a human hero that killed his father, inciting more noise, despite the fact that he is an adamant law enforcer and tries to maintain order. But then, when Eliza sees Taurus' father, she thinks Taurus locked up his own parent rather than asking "I thought your father was killed". So what exactly was the point of scapegoating a human for the one being he obviously despises more than anyone else? In fact, why didn't Eliza ask why he lied in the first place?

If we're thinking of the same part, he doesn't say father. He says his ancestor, the Minotaur, was killed by a hero.

Macbeth meeting Thailog

I find it odd that Macbeth's only response is "who the blazes are you?" when he first sees Thailog. He's not at all shocked that there is a gargoyle who looks and sounds like Goliath standing next to Demona? My first thought was that Macbeth was going to mistake Thailog for Goliath, but that didn't happen. He doesn't question why the evil gargoyle looks like one of his enemies.

"Who the blazes are you?" is him being shocked at the appearance.

The best answer is he's met sufficiently few gargoyles that seeing one who looked a lot like Goliath but was immediately recognizable as not Goliath didn't set him off. Additionally anybody with first hand knowledge of the Weird Sisters may very well skip silly questions like how can there be an identical clone of something running around. The man has spent several centuries chasing a gargoyle.

Goliath leaving the eggs to Katherine

Why did Goliath left the eggs to Katherine's care, who of all people is a human? Didn't the massacre taught him to be more cautious with who he should trust? Why not handing them over to the Wyvern split-clan or some other clans in Scotland?

Goliath is not biased against humans. And I don't recall anything about other clans in Scotland.

There were several other clans, they all got wiped out due to Demona's ongoing war with the Hunter.

Goliath was also incredibly depressed and suicidal at the time (he considered the Magus' spell to be permanent since the castle rising above the clouds seemed impossible to him) so he passed the eggs to the closest person he could trust and joined the others.

Why didn't Macbeth and Gruoch fake their deaths?

Why didn't they fake their deaths to get out of the arranged marriage? Macbeth was worried about putting Gruoch in danger if they run off together, but what if he had arranged a "fatal accident" the day before the wedding? Everyone would think they're dead, and they could easily sneak away to another land (posing as peasants).

And how were they supposed to do that? Neither of them had access to either advanced technology or magic at the time, so any plan would either be ridiculously convoluted to pull off, or would have required finding and murdering two people who somehow looked exactly like them, which really isn't anything either of them would've done, especially back then.

Also, their lands, titles and families are kind of important to them. Not everyone is willing to throw away literally everything.

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